Devon Delfino
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Backing up your data is one of those necessary tasks that often gets pushed to the backburner until it's too late. If you've deleted WhatsApp messages that you now need to recover, so long as you've set up backups to your Google Drive , you're in luck.
You can recover those deleted messages quickly and easily using Google Drive and your phone number. You have to use the same phone number and Google account linked to your WhatsApp account, otherwise the process won't work.
With that in mind, here's how to recover deleted WhatsApp messages from your Google Drive on an Android device.
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If you've already set up a backup, proceed with these steps. Otherwise, scroll down to the section below on backups.
1. Delete WhatsApp from your Android device.
2. Open the Google Play Store and reinstall WhatsApp.
How to recover deleted WhatsApp messages Devon Delfino/Business Insider
3. Open the app and verify your phone number.
4. A prompt will appear to "Restore" your chats from your Google Drive, tap "RESTORE."
5. Tap "NEXT."
All of your backed up deleted messages and media files should now be restored.
If you want to preserve your future WhatsApp messages, here's how to set up automatic backups for your Android :
1. Open WhatsApp and tap the three dots in the top-right corner of the screen.
2. Tap "Settings" and then select "Chats."
How to recover deleted WhatsApp messages Devon Delfino/Business Insider
3. Tap "Chat backup."
How to recover deleted WhatsApp messages Devon Delfino/Business Insider
4. Select "Backup to Google Drive" and select anything other than "Never."
How to recover deleted WhatsApp messages Devon Delfino/Business Insider
5. Select the Google account that you want to use for your WhatsApp backups, or connect a new account by tapping "Add Account."
6.
Tap "Back up over" and choose the network to use for backups, if necessary.
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Do you need to recover deleted or missing WhatsApp messages? It's certainly possible, depending on the situation.
Below, you'll learn how to recover deleted WhatsApp messages on your iPhone or Android device. We'll then teach you how to set up an advanced WhatsApp backup plan to ensure you never lose any of your WhatsApp messages again.
In order to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages, you must have enabled Chat Backup in the app's settings. To reach this, tap the Settings tab. It's on the bottom bar of the iPhone app; on Android, open the three-dot menu at the top-right and choose Settings.
From there, head to Chats > Chat backup. Here (under Auto Backup on iOS and Back up to Google Drive on Android), the app offers several backup frequencies (along with the option to encrypt your WhatsApp backups):
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On Android, WhatsApp makes a local backup every night, but this won't help you if you lose your phone.
This is why cloud backups are vital.
WhatsApp deletes older backup files as you create new ones. The iPhone app only keeps the latest backup file, while the Android version keeps "up to the last seven days' worth" of backup files. Keep that in mind as you choose the right backup frequency for your needs.
By having daily auto-backups, you'll be able to easily recover WhatsApp messages soon after deleting them. On the other hand, weekly auto-backups will allow you to go further back in time to recover deleted WhatsApp messages, at the expense of losing recent chat messages.
For a more advanced backup plan for Android devices, scroll down to the "An Advanced WhatsApp Backup Strategy for Android" section below.
Before we look at recovering deleted WhatsApp messages, there's a chance that you might have just archived a missing chat, not deleted it. But what's the difference?
Archiving removes the chat from your list, allowing you to hide conversations that you're done with for now.
You can unarchive a chat at any time to access it again, and archiving doesn't delete anything in the chat. Conversely, deleting a chat erases its contents, so they're no longer accessible to you.
On iPhone, when you archive a chat, you can immediately reverse the archival by shaking your device and choosing Undo to recover the archived chat. But even if you miss this, it's easy to retrieve archived WhatsApp chats later.
To unarchive a WhatsApp chat on iPhone:
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To unarchive a chat on Android:
Wondering how to get back deleted WhatsApp messages after backing them up? You can restore your WhatsApp backup by simply uninstalling and reinstalling WhatsApp on your device.
When you reinstall the app, you will be prompted to restore your message history from the backup file. Tap Restore and you'll retrieve everything from the latest backup. Make sure to do it when prompted, as you can't restore the backup file later.
This method of recovering deleted WhatsApp messages works on both Android and iPhone, as long as you have a backup. Keep in mind that you can only recover backed-up messages within your selected auto-backup frequency, however.
For instance, if you've set the app to back up daily, you can recover any deleted chats before the next daily backup occurs.
But if the app has made a new backup since you deleted certain messages, they're lost for good.
Hopefully, restoring your backup file allowed you to retrieve any deleted media from your chats. If that didn't work, however, read our guide to recovering deleted photos from WhatsApp.
On Android, you can simply open a file explorer app and navigate to /WhatsApp/Media. From there, simply sift through the folders until you find the deleted photos you want to recover.
On iPhone, you should have a backup copy of images saved to your device if you have the Save to Camera Roll option enabled at Settings > Chats in WhatsApp.
Check the above guide for additional methods of media recovery.
Getting deleted messages back after a new WhatsApp backup has run is slightly more difficult. Your success will depend on your selected auto-backup frequency.
Note that the below strategy only works on Android devices, since the OS lets you access local backup files. If you're using an iPhone, your only other method is to restore an iPhone backup that you made before deleting the WhatsApp chats. There are third-party apps that claim to help you recover WhatsApp chats, but they aren't cheap and offer no guarantees. Whether you use these is up to how much you value the missing messages.
Before we dive into the process, here's an overview of restoring older WhatsApp chats on Android:
As mentioned before, WhatsApp on Android retains several days of chat backup files. One is, of course, the latest chat backup. The others, depending on your auto-backup frequency, could be one day or many days old. In addition to the Google Drive cloud backup, WhatsApp stores these backups on your device's local storage.
Open your device's file explorer app (Files by Google is a good option if you don't have one installed), and navigate to /WhatsApp/Databases. Depending on your device, the WhatsApp folder may appear under /sdcard/, /storage/, Internal Memory, or similar.
Within that WhatsApp folder, you'll find the various chat backup files. The latest one is named msgstore.db.crypt12, while the others look like msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.
1.db.crypt12. As you'd expect, YYYY-MM-DD represents the year, month, and date (respectively) that the backup file was created.
To retrieve WhatsApp messages deleted sometime between two backups, simply do the following:
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After this, uninstall WhatsApp. If you've enabled Google Drive cloud backups, open the Google Drive app, slide out the left menu, and select Backups. You'll see a WhatsApp backup file with your phone number in it. Tap the three-dot Menu to the right of this and choose Delete backup to erase it.
Doing this prevents WhatsApp from using the backup file in Google Drive instead of the local file you want to restore.
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Now, reinstall WhatsApp from the Play Store. During the setup process, you'll be prompted to restore from the backup file you've just tweaked—it will show as X days old instead of the most recent backup file. Confirm restoration from this file.
That's all you have to do in order to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages from older backups. Once you've restored those messages, feel free to start using WhatsApp as normal again.
When you walk through the above, you'll lose any messages created since the backup you restored. If you only performed that process to restore a few deleted messages, and don't want to lose recent messages, you can export the retrieved chat messages and then restore WhatsApp to the latest backup.
You'll have to run through the entire process again, but it's not difficult.
To export messages, open the chat containing the messages you want to save. Tap the three-dot Menu button at the top-right, followed by More > Export chat. If the chat has media, you'll see an option to export Without media or to Include media.
Including media will add all recent images as attachments, which obviously increases the size of the export file. You can export up to 10,000 messages with media, or 40,000 messages without media.
After you make your choice, choose an app on your phone to share the text file (and attachments, if applicable) containing your messages. You can email this to yourself, add it to cloud storage, or similar. Repeat this for any other chats with messages you want to save.
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Once you're done exporting, follow the steps in the above section again to access your WhatsApp backups.
When you come to renaming the backup files, reverse the process:
Uninstall WhatsApp, delete your Google Drive backup again if needed, and reinstall the app. After you restore from backup, your latest chats will reappear. The messages you exported won't appear inside WhatsApp, but you can at least see them in the text file whenever you need them.
Because you can easily view and edit WhatsApp chat backup files on Android, it's easy to manipulate them. Renaming them allows you to keep as many backup files as you want.
All you need to do is rename a backup in the msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt12 format to something else, such as oct11.db.crypt12 or 2021-June-Backup. Because this file doesn't use WhatsApp's naming convention, it's now protected from WhatsApp overwriting it.
Consider creating your own backup file in this way once every month or so. That way, you won't lose tons of messages if you have to restore from an older backup. For even more safety, you should copy these backup files to cloud storage or your computer so that they're safe in case your phone stops working or you lose it.
As you can see, it's fairly easy to recover deleted WhatsApp messages. However, this is only the case if you've backed up your messages ahead of time. This is why the advanced backup strategy is worth setting up if you're an Android user. iPhone owners don't have as many options.
Now that you know you won't lose any WhatsApp messages in the future, it's a good idea to discover some of WhatsApp's other cool features that aren't immediately visible.
October 15
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0You can fully restore deleted WhatsApp chats from Google Drive only if you first activate the backup function. To do this, in the application settings, you need to go along the path "Chats" → "Backup of chats", and then set the frequency of creating a backup: daily, weekly or monthly.
The backup will only be stored on the Google account that originally started the backup. To restore correspondence, you need to use the same phone number to which your account in the messenger is registered.
Your device stores local backup files from the last week. To recover deleted messages, you need to transfer these entries to the folder with the WhatsApp chat database using a file manager.
There are a large number of WhatsApp data recovery tools. For example, Tenorshare UltData, Wondershare MobileTrans, iMyFone D-Back and similar programs. They should pull up deleted chats and other information both from the smartphone’s memory and from backups.
Almost all apps require a subscription to enable WhatsApp data recovery. At the same time, they do not have extraordinary algorithms for rolling back deleted files. For example, the mobile version of the UltData for Android application uses the same reserves as the messenger itself. Therefore, it is not worth placing high hopes on such programs. But you can use one of these PC utilities if other methods have not worked.
In most cases the sequence is very similar:
You can use auto-save to iCloud to back up and restore your chat history. As in the case of Android, you must first activate the backup in the WhatsApp settings.
You can only start recovery with the same Apple ID that you use with iCloud. At the same time, the amount of free space in the cloud and in the memory of your device must be at least twice the size of the backup.
For iOS, there are versions of the same software as for Android. All of them require payment, but they do not give guarantees for the full restoration of correspondence. Rather, it's just a more convenient way to selectively search for backups in local storage or the cloud than the full processing of all chats saved in iCloud.
If you decide to use this method, the procedure is almost the same as with Android.
Read also 📱
Messengers have been in our life for a very long time, but it was during the pandemic that they became more popular than ever. At a time when social activity was limited to online communication, people of all ages switched to Viber, Telegram and WhatsApp.
Often there are cases when, due to the large number of chats, some messages are accidentally deleted. And this can be an important work chat or personal correspondence that you really want to keep. Today we will try to tell you about how to restore correspondence in WhatsApp if there is no backup copy . We will consider the example of Android users.
When might you need help with data recovery?
Such cases seem hopeless at first glance, but they are not: it is possible to restore correspondence in WhatsApp.
Such a case is considered almost hopeless: it is unlikely that deleted messages will be restored. But there is always an exception to every rule.
The only thing you can do is to ask the second participant in the correspondence to send it to you. Yes, the whole chat can be sent to your phone. This is done within the application itself without additional tools. How to forward messages?
2. Then a “right arrow” will appear in the upper right corner, which opens the contact list. From it your interlocutor will choose your number.
This method will help you return the correspondence in WhatsApp, if the deletion was through the "Delete at home" function.
If both sides had deleted, then there is no chance to restore the messages. You can forward the entire chat. For this you need:
Select a chat, and specify the method of sending.
How to restore correspondence in WhatsApp if there was no backup copy, and the interlocutor also cannot send you messages? In fact, there is a proven method that does not involve backup, but involves the use of a third-party utility. It's about Tenorshare UltData WhatsApp Recovery.
This is a modern and reliable program that helps you quickly and efficiently recover messages in the WhatsApp messenger. Its main advantage is ease of use. The developers took care of all device owners. UltData WhatsApp Recovery is compatible with thousands of Android/iOS devices: tablets, phones from Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, Motorola, etc.
We have developed detailed instructions.
When the installation is completed, an active window will appear on the desktop with all the functions that it offers. We, in this case, are interested in the "Restore WhatsApp data" button.
Connect your device with a cable to a PC.
The program will request a special setting to synchronize with the device. It will take some time.
The utility has detected your device. Now you can go to the next screen. To do this, press the "Start" key, which will start searching for deleted WhatsApp data on your device.
Then log into your account. If you've already done so, click "Yes, I want to continue." Once the backup issue is resolved, Tenorshare UltData for Android will run a scan to detect data on your smartphone.
Upon completion of the operation, all found data will appear on the screen, including deleted chats and messages.
Choose what you would like to return, then click the "Restore" button.
The operation was successfully completed if this icon appears on the screen.
We told you how to restore correspondence in WhatsApp if there was no backup. But in order to avoid such situations, we recommend making regular copies within the program itself.
This is very simple and takes just a couple of minutes, but in the future it will save you from several hours of trying to recover lost data.
Click on the "Backup of chats" button. After that, whatsapp will ask you how often you would like to do them. Choose the period of time through which it will be more convenient for you. Ideally, this should be done daily. Especially if you have a lot of work correspondence.
When making backups, WhatsApp will prompt you to select the connection method that it will use to back up: Wi-Fi or cellular.
If you do not have constant access to wireless Internet, then we recommend that you choose the second method.
There is another reliable way to create backups so that you do not have to look for the answer to the question: "How to return correspondence in WhatsApp." It's about creating a backup copy with saving on Google Drive.
Don't worry about whatsapp copies will use up all your Google Drive storage: they don't touch it at all. What else do you need to know about this feature?
We tried to tell you in detail about how to restore WhatsApp correspondence if there was an accidental deletion or the phone was lost.
